Secret Star (11 page)

Daddy stayed away from her until afternoon, then wheeled into the living room and asked her whether she wanted some lunch. She shook her head.

“You feeling any better?”

“Some,” she admitted. She put down the drumsticks for a moment and looked at him. “What was my father like?”

He hesitated, but then told it to her straight. “He was a dangerous man.” His eyes scanned her face as he talked. “Jealous. Violent. Never accepted that Teresa left him. While he was in jail it was okay, but the minute he got out—he was in my house. Busted in. Coming at me with the knife.”

“He was in jail?”

“He was in jail a lot. Doing things that might land him in jail was kind of his profession.”

“Oh.”

“That's how I knew—when Kamo came here—see, Rojahin is the name on your birth certificate, but God knows what the guy's real name was. He went by Marcus Rojahin, Mark Rojohn, John Ryan, uh, Rory Jones, Rory Jamison—a bunch more I can't remember. I figured it was a pretty good bet he wasn't Kamo's dad.”

“Great,” Tess muttered. “My father was a criminal.”

“He was big,” Daddy said quietly, “and good-looking, and exciting, and he never did a bad thing to you or Teresa, though sometimes he scared her. That's why she left him. But she always loved him better than me.”

The matter-of-fact way he said it made her gawk at him. He answered her stare for a moment, then wheeled away and left her alone with her drums.

Bang, bang. How had it felt when she shot him down?

When Tess finally headed toward her room to get out of her sweatpants and into some real clothes he was sitting in there waiting for her. “I don't want you to go to work today.”

Anger flared again. She pushed past him to get to her dresser. “Don't you try to tell me what to do!”

“No. Tessie, listen.” He said it more softly. “I don't want you to go.”

Then somehow for a moment she actually understood that he was not trying to order her around, that he was worried. More: frightened.

Yet she could not look at him, and her voice insisted on coming out rough. “I'll be back.”

“Tess—”

“Look, I'm doing the best I can. I'll be back.”

She had to go to work. Butch would think it was on account of him if she stayed away, and partly it would have been on account of him, and she wasn't going to lose a job because an ignorant no-neck male with an attitude had hassled her. In flannel shirt and jeans and her old Red Wings she started hiking toward the IGA.

Walk, walk. When she was in kindergarten, Mommy used to walk her to school.
Hey, I've got memories!
Of walking to school past the fancy-painted fire hydrant on the corner and the big dogs behind a spiky fence—Mommy would growl back at them. Mommy was goofy and a lot of fun, with jars and jars of pink bubble stuff so she and Tess could run around in the back yard blowing bubbles. Laughing at the big ones. Mommy was like a big kid.

Walk, walk. Daddy, the big blond daddy, walking in the door. See what kind of mood he's in. If it was a good one, he'd grab Tess and tickle her just long enough to make her laugh. If it was a bad one, she'd go to her room.

She was a kid then. Not a kid anymore. Too big now to stay away from a stud in a bad mood.

But when she got to the IGA, Butch wasn't there. “Called in sick, said he had a headache,” Lupe told her.

“I bet he does,” Tess said. She had clobbered him pretty good.

So that was one good thing: no Butch. The memories were another good thing. Yet, trying to do her job, Tess felt miserable. Grieving. As if somebody had died. Well, somebody had: her father, her mother, years ago—but it felt like yesterday. That on top of Butch and his gun on top of all the usual worries: no money, Daddy's health, maybe having to move, school—Tess ached. Her whole chest felt empty with just wanting—something. Wanting to be done wanting.

Crux came on.

In this dirty world

you can't see far

but you gotta believe

there's a secret star…

Yeah, right,
Tess thought. She didn't want to believe anything anymore. She didn't want to dream anymore. Believing, dreaming—they hurt too much. She threw down the potatoes she was sorting, strode past Lupe, and whacked off the radio.

When she got out of work, Kam was not there.

Tess looked all around, peering into the dusk. She'd thought for sure Kamo would be there. Where was he? He knew she was going through all kinds of crap. She couldn't believe he wasn't there for her.

But he wasn't. Tess stood by the Dumpster, darkness coming, shifting from one big foot to the other, alone again.

Can't depend on anybody
.

She pressed her lips together and started walking, out the gravel lot to the alley, up the alley toward the street. Staring at the ground. Tired. Too damn many hills. Kam was probably loafing in his camp, the slug. Listening to Crux on his radio.

Wait a minute. She remembered a couple of times when she had run to his camp in the night and thought she heard a radio, but she'd never seen any—

A car roared up behind her, slowed beside her. Someone laughed.

She turned her head, startled, afraid for a moment. But no, it wasn't Butch. One of his friends, in a thunderous old Barracuda. “Hey!” he yelled at her. “You going to the fight?”

She gawked at him. He laughed again and roared off.

Fight? What was he talking about?

Why had he laughed?

Tess walked, head up, alert now. Just as she reached the end of the alley, Butch's truck whizzed by, headed up Main Street. Butch hadn't seen her, but she had seen him.

Oh, God. Why had that kid yelled something about a fight at her? Why had he laughed? Only one possible reason.

Only one good reason why Kam hadn't been at the IGA to meet her.

Tess started to run up the steep Main Street hill. When her chest hurt, she kept running. When her lungs caught fire, she kept running.

She got to the top just in time to see Butch's truck disappearing down the lane that led to the salvage yard.

Made sense. Of course they'd meet there. Of course they'd do it at dusk, when the men who worked there were gone.

Oh, God. Oh, Kam.

Tess ran. Across somebody's yard and into woods, trying to get to the salvage yard faster. But a creek had cut a ravine in the hillside and the ravine was filled with blackberry tangles. Tess swore, tore through the brambles, ran through the rocky shallow water, lunged up the far side of the ravine. At the top was a tumbledown stone wall topped with a strand of rusty barbed wire; Tess felt it rip her shirt and slice into her back as she dove through. “Damn it!”
Kamo, what kind of stupidity is going through your head?
“Idiot!” She knew some of what he was thinking. At one point after all hell broke loose he had asked her, with that tight lost look on his face, “Did you like Butch? Ever?” and she had almost laughed. No, she hadn't liked Butch. She had wanted Butch to like her. There was a difference.

Kamo, please. Don't get yourself hurt
.

She barreled over the hill and down toward the salvage yard, bleeding.

Panting, she reached the edge of the woods.

Then she stood still, feeling her heart clench. Two of Butch's friends were holding Kamo by the arms while the others gathered around. Tess saw the guy who had laughed at her. And she saw Butch strutting and showing off his muscles in front of Kamo. And she heard him.

“You thought we'd slow-dance, maybe?” Butch was yelling. “I got news for you, baby. Nobody calls me out. Nobody.” He backhanded Kam across the face.

Kam did not flinch from the whack. He stood straight and still—a stance Tess remembered from the first day she had met him—his face hard, not acknowledging the blow, his body hard and alert, poised like a slim dark knife blade, ready to strike in any direction in an instant. He did not posture or thrust his chest out the way Butch was doing or tug against the hands gripping him. He just stood like flint and said nothing. Butch was not worth answering.

Tess felt dizzy with fear. There were six of them. Too many.

She had to do something.

Get moving.

She ran, carefully and quietly this time. Instead of running toward them she circled around, still in the woods. They were standing in a weedy clearing amid junk, near the shack where Butch had pulled a gun on her. Kam had probably picked the place. The idiot. Gutsy fool.

Leaving the cover of the woods, Tess crouched behind junked cars and scuttled closer.

“—gonna wish you never come here,” Butch was threatening. “You want to go now? You ask nice, maybe I'll let you go. Get down on your knees. Say please.”

From where she was, behind a wrecked Dodge and almost behind Kam, Tess could not see his face but she could see the taut lines of his shoulders, waiting. He said nothing, but she could tell he was not about to say please. He had no intention of begging. She could tell: all he needed was a chance.

“I said on your
knees,
freak face!” Butch grabbed Kam's headband like he was yanking somebody by the tie. The stitching snapped, the eye patch came off in his hand, and Tess saw Kam's hard shoulders wince as if that hurt him worse than being hit. His fists clenched so hard he shook. For the first time he tried to pull free, lunging toward Butch.

Butch snarled and coiled to punch. They all yelled. Fight! They all piled into Kamo at once.

But not before Tess Mathis, the biggest, strongest girl in Canadawa High School, yelled and charged.

Half a second before they reached Kam she bulled in with her shoulder down and rammed one of the guys holding Kamo in the hollow of his back. She flattened him, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Kam tear away from the other one—she knew all he needed was a chance. He leveled the guy with one good punch while Tess plowed on through and butted her head into Butch's gut. She heard the whoosh as Butch deflated. While he stood there struggling for breath, she punched him in the face.

“Bitch!” He hit back, catching her on the side of the head pretty hard. Tess still felt like she could take him—but things got busy and confused for a while. Forget Butch. She had to concentrate on staying alive, staying on her feet, not letting them get her down where they could kick her. She had to punch straight, kick hard, chomp down on whatever got too close, scream—she screamed like a psycho. Done right, screaming is fighting too.

But she was like Kam; she didn't usually fight unless she had to. And she'd sure never fought six guys at once. They were slowing her down—

She felt somebody put his back against hers to keep them from coming at her from behind. “You all right, Kam?” she yelled.

“Compared to what?” he yelled back. He was okay. He sounded mad.

Kam fought as though he knew what he was doing. And by now Tess had a further opinion of Butch and his friends. They were chicken. She could see it in their eyes. They didn't like actually having to fight instead of just beat up on somebody. Some of them were starting to pull back. They sure weren't worth being afraid of.

“Cowards!” Tess screamed at them—Kam was mad, but she was white-fire nuclear-fission mad. Ballistic. Furious. Fighting felt good, burning the anger out of her. “C'mon! We'll whip the whole bunch of you!”

Then for a moment she was afraid they would take her up on it. But they hesitated, looking over their shoulders. A car was coming down the salvage-yard lane, and she couldn't see much in the dusk with the headlights making her squint but it looked like a Caprice, which is what a lot of Pennsylvania cops drive.

Butch ran for his truck.

“Tess.” Kam's voice sounded strained. “Come on.” He touched her arm, and she ran after him, into the woods. On his wild black hair she saw blood.

12

No one followed. Tess looked back; Butch and his friends were busy piling into their turbo-powered smoke-in-your-face macho-mobiles and tearing out of there as the police car slewed around and swooped after them.

Fifty feet into the woods Kamo stopped running and walked, not too steadily. Tess walked beside him. “Damn them,” Kam said, his voice stretched thin and taut. “I never expected six of them.”

“You're an idiot,” Tess said.

“I know I am. God damn them.” Kam was bleeding. His head, his face, his hands. He was shaking in reaction to the fight. Without its eye patch his face looked strange and naked to Tess. Walking on his left side, his blind side, she couldn't help looking at the place where his eye should have been, and he was too stunned from the fight to notice at first—but then he slammed his hand over that side of his face and turned his head away.

“Kam.” She stepped in front of him, halting him. “Stop that.” Gently she took his bloodied hand and tugged it down from his face. “You think you're ugly? You're not.”

What he was trying to hide was just a scar, that was all. No blind staring withered eye, no empty eyelids, no eye socket, just scarring. A hollow, and on the skin, white lines that formed a crooked cross.

“You're beautiful,” she said. So very beautiful. Far more beautiful than her first dream of the secret star had been. Far more brave. A quiet drumming started in her heart, a quiet singing in her bones.

“Crux,” she whispered.

She should have known when she heard him singing in the night. Of course the secret star was Kam. Of course Kamo was the secret star. Kamo was the most secret star person who had ever lived.

He gasped. She saw it hit him, stagger him like a gut punch—he knew exactly what she was talking about, and he didn't pretend not to, but it seemed to knock him breathless for a moment. Tess exclaimed, “Kam, it's all right!” She put out her hands to steady him by the shoulders.

She felt him quivering like a guitar string. “Are you—going to—tell—”

“Of course not.” She could never do that to Kam. In a way he was strong, but she knew well enough why he hid behind his music; in a way he was the most frail person she knew. Scarred, scared, shy, dreaming, crying sometimes—if the newspeople got hold of him, they would eat him for dinner. Headlines—
STAR MUTILATED AS CHILD. WANDERING STAR SEEKS LONG-LOST FATHER.
Photographers following him everywhere, fans mobbing him—it would kill him. Tess felt annoyed at herself for blurting out the word that had jolted him so much. After he had just taken on Butch for her sake, yet. Crazy fool. As if she couldn't take care of herself.